Rescue Me
It was a beautiful weekend. One of the nicer weekends we have had in a long time.
I…had to clean out the garage.
I think I had to clean out the garage this weekend to make up for all the unintentional mean things I have said to my wife over the last twenty years. I say unintentional because certainly I would never say anything intentionally mean to my wife.
I even had to part with my three level, four by eight foot metal warehouse rack shelving that I have had in my garages since before we got married.
I was sad.
I took it and two truckloads of stuff…to “the dump.”
In Jersey we always called it “the dump.”
Here it’s actually called the Fairfax County Solid Waste Recycling Center. That’s a mouthful.
But I should know better.
One Saturday morning a couple of years ago I was asked to open up one of the offices of the company that I worked for at the time, so that a group that we supported could use the space for a meeting. This was a group of volunteer coaches for a youth sports program in the county.
It was okay with me that I open the office that morning because I had a pick-up truck load of stuff that I needed to take to “the dump” anyway, and this office happened to be close to the Fairfax County Solid Waste Recycling Center.
I opened the office and waited for the meeting to start. The leader of the group, my contact, offered me the opportunity to speak so I stood up and welcomed them, said a few words about the company, and in closing I said “now if you will excuse me I need to go to the dump.”
I said thanks, made my exit, and drove to the Fairfax County Solid Waste Recycling Center. Once done I stopped and had a cup of coffee while I waited for the meeting to be over so I could go back and lock up.
When I returned the meeting was over and everyone had left except for my contact who was cleaning up.
I asked how the meeting went and he said, “Great, but one funny thing did happen.”
“What was that?” I asked.
“Well after you left,” he said, “someone spoke up and said,”
“Wow that was inappropriate.”
“What do you mean?” he asked the volunteer coach who made the comment.
“Way too much information” said the volunteer, “telling us he was going to go now and take a dump.”
So my contact had to explain that I didn’t say I was going to “go take a dump,” in fact what I had said was that I was going to go to “the dump,” the refuse center.
So we laughed, but I was little embarrassed.
I guess sometimes we say things we don’t really mean. And sometimes people hear things we didn’t really say; or sometimes people hear what we say but take it to mean something very different.
Something unintentional.
And so sometimes we end up embarrassed…or sometimes we end up having to clean the garage.
But in the end it all worked out. I don’t work for that company anymore; and my wife is really excited that she may be able to put her car in the garage this winter.
Life is good.
But you might be saying right now, “Geez Curt, this is inappropriate, this is way too much information.”
Maybe, but it’s not about crude bathroom humor or cleaning out the garage.
One of the prayers at church this morning had this opening line:
“Lord, please rescue me…from me.”
Since there are times when we do say things that are inappropriate; and there are times when we do say things that are embarrassing; and then there are also times when we say things or behave in certain ways intentionally that may be hurtful to others, even though we didn’t mean them to be.
Sometimes we just need rescued, rescued from ourselves.
